Summary: This article asserts the need to rediscover work as an essential human dimension and a necessary expression of the person’s dignity and identity. The human being is an innate "worker" and, through labour, he/she expresses and develops his/her more authentic self. Thus is to be understood Pope John Paul II’s affirmation that, “Work is probably the essential key to the whole social question”. This discourse is founded on a Christian anthropology, which lays the foundations for the free and complete giving of oneself. In this way, the Cartesian statement "I am thinking, therefore I exist", becomes “I am loved, therefore I exist”.